Devoured By Darkness (14 page)

“Just the opposite.” She knocked away his hands. “All I want is peace and quiet and a place where I can keep the baby safe.”

He clenched his teeth. He wouldn’t let that hint of wistful yearning tug at his heart. “An impossible dream.”

“Perhaps for the moment, but eventually I’ll manage to provide us with a home. I’m not helpless.”

His lips twisted in a humorless smile. “I’m painfully aware of your powers, but I’m not willing to turn a blind eye to the dangers that stalk you. I’ll bet my favorite Rolex that Marika and her mage are in search of the child.”

Without warning she turned on her heel and paced across the office, her beautiful features set in lines of grim determination.

“No, they’re looking for me,” she corrected. “I’m the only one who can touch the baby. They need me.”

Fear feathered down his spine.

“Stop right there, Laylah.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

“I’m beginning to recognize that expression.”

She abruptly returned to her pacing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

With a blinding speed he was across the room, yanking her around so she wouldn’t miss his don’t-screw-with-me frown.

“You’re hatching some insane scheme and I won’t allow it.”

“Won’t allow it?” The air filled with dangerous prickles. “I ought to fry you just for being an arrogant ass.”

“And I ought to lock you in the nearest dungeon.” With an effort he loosened his grip on her arm, leashing his Neanderthal urges. “Laylah, you aren’t going to make yourself bait.”

She paused. Perhaps weighing the pleasure of zapping him with lightning against the less lethal, yet more terrifying delight of trapping him in the mists between worlds.

“It will only be long enough to lead Marika and Sergei away,” she at last broke the silence. “Once they’ve lost my trail I can return to collect the baby and disappear for good.”

His power blasted through the room, knocking priceless first editions off the shelves and making the lights flicker.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

She paled, but held her ground. “I’ll admit it’s not the best plan …”

“It’s a suicide mission and you know it,” he snapped.

“There’s no need to be so melodramatic. I’ve survived on my own for a long time.”

“Shit ass luck that’s bound to run out eventually.”

She sucked in a furious breath as she surged onto her tiptoes and stabbed a finger into the center of his chest.

“I wasn’t asking your permission, He-man.”

He grasped her arms and lifted her until they were nose to nose. Glare to glare.

“Then obviously you’ve forgotten you’re my prisoner. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Don’t you have that backward?” she ground out, drowning him in the delicious sensation of heat and furious woman. Even when she was frustrating the hell out of him the image of spreading her across Styx’s desk and thrusting deep into her body was searing into his brain. “You’re in my power and I command that you let me go.”

He claimed her lips in a kiss of blatant ownership. “Checkmate.”

Her lips softened in a brief moment of madness, then she was pressing her hands against his chest.

“Tane …”

“No Laylah, you won’t be charging off alone.” He returned her feet to the fancy carpet, but he held onto her arms, unable to let go. Dammit. There weren’t any good choices. Not so long as the Commission considered her a danger. What he needed was time to convince the damned Oracles this female was not a threat. And more importantly, the ability to keep her from getting herself killed before he could do it. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow.”

She frowned at the harsh warning in his voice. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

It was his simple honesty that stole her breath.

Along with her higher brain functions.

I don’t know …

She could return the sentiment.

The damned vampire had her so twisted in knots she didn’t know if she was coming or going.

One minute she wanted to zap him into a little pile of dust and the next she wanted to back him against the nearest wall and do wicked things to his hard, perfect body.

Lost in the honey gaze, Laylah nearly came out of her skin when Styx’s voice boomed through the intercom.

“Tane. I need you upstairs.”

Tane stiffened, his grip tightening on her arms.

“Not now,” he growled.

“Now,” the ancient vampire snapped back.

“Damn.” Tane abruptly stepped back, his expression tight with frustration. “I won’t be long.”

“I’ll come with …”

“No, my sweet.” Tane firmly overrode her words, folding his arms over his chest. “If Styx wanted you to join us then he would have asked for you.”

She frowned, her mood tilting toward the whole turning him into toast rather than licking him from head to toe.

“So I’m supposed to wait here like a good girl while you decide my future?”

“It’s much more likely that this has nothing to do with you, Laylah.”

Her hands clenched at her sides. “Yeah, right.”

“Have you forgotten that Styx is the King of Vampires and I’m his Charon?” He held her gaze, his painfully beautiful face impossible to read. “Stay here.”

Her heart forgot to beat.

Shit. Did he think that made things better?

“Tane,” she said as he headed toward the door.

He halted and turned to meet her worried gaze. “Yes?”

“What if this is vampire business?”

He shrugged. “Then I’ll do my duty.”

She was standing directly in front of him without knowing how she got there.

“A Charon’s duty?”

Another shrug. “Yes.”

Let him go,
a voice whispered in the back of her mind.

With Styx and Tane distracted she would have the perfect opportunity to escape. Perhaps the
only
opportunity.

But instead she grabbed his arm, her gaze glued to his face as if she were desperate to memorize every elegant line and curve.

“What does that mean?”

“Now is not the time …”

“Please, I need to know.” She tightened her grip until her nails dug into his flesh, already suspecting that his position among vampires not only was one of power, but of intense danger. “What exactly does a Charon do?”

She felt him tense, as if he were startled by her fierce reaction.

Hell, he couldn’t be any more startled than she was.

Minutes ticked by until at last he brushed his fingers through her spiked hair.

“It’s not common knowledge, but there are vampires who become addicted to the blood of alcoholics and drug users,” he said, his voice instinctively lowering as he shared the private weakness of vampires. “It eventually drives them mad. If I don’t track them down and kill them before it’s too late they will go into complete bloodlust.”

A ball of ice formed in the pit of her stomach. “What happens?”

“They will go on a mindless rampage and they will destroy everything and everyone in their path.” She sucked in a shocked breath. She was prepared for dangerous. Not for mindless rampages.

“And it’s your job to stop them?” Her voice was thick.

“There’s no choice.” His fingers absently outlined the shell of her ear. “Once a vampire’s crossed the threshold into madness they won’t stop the massacre until they run out of victims or they’re decapitated.”

His touch held its usual magic, sending tiny jolts of pleasure through her, but she was consumed by the terror at the insane risks this vampire took with his life.

“Why you?”

His honey gaze bored deep into her wide eyes, seeming to seek the truth of her tangled emotions. Yeah, good luck on that. “Me?” he rasped.

“Why do you have to be the one to hunt down the mass-murdering psychos?” “Because I’m a Charon.”

Her breath hissed through her clenched teeth. He was being deliberately evasive.

Which meant he was hiding something. “Were you drafted or was it a volunteer program?” “Styx approached me about the position and I accepted.” “Just like that?”

“Why do you sound so skeptical?”

“Because I don’t think anyone would willingly put themselves in a position of being an executioner.”

He dropped his hand, his expression closing up like the proverbial clam.

“It has to be done.”

Her dread deepened at his flat statement. It was the sort of thing a man said when he didn’t intend to be reasonable.

“I’m not arguing the legitimacy of the job, just why you would choose to do it.”

“Why not?” The honey gaze shifted to somewhere over her shoulder. “Every vampire loves the thrill of the hunt. Styx has tried his best to civilize us, so it’s a rare treat to pit my skills against a worthy opponent.”

She snorted. Only an idiot would doubt that Tane was aggressive enough to enjoy ripping the throat out of an enemy. But there was no way she could be convinced that he would take pleasure in putting down a brother who was crazed with bloodlust.

Besides, no one would deliberately take a position that would have them shunned by their own family.

“You love the hunt so much you’re willing to be feared and ostracized by your family?” she challenged.

His brows lifted. “What makes you think I’m an outcast?”

“I’m not stupid, Tane.” She folded her arms around her waist, a familiar ache settling in the center of her heart. She knew all about shunning. And the pain of always being seen as a threat, no matter how hard she tried to prove herself. “I could see how Victor’s clan treated you. Half of them looked like they wanted to crawl in the nearest hole when you walked into the room and the other half looked like they wanted to plant a stake in your back.”

With a smooth motion he turned to pace toward the heavy desk, but not before Laylah glimpsed the wounds that darkened the beautiful honey eyes.

Wounds so raw she shuddered in horror.

“My power is great enough I’ll always be feared regardless if I’m a Charon or not.” He kept his back turned, his voice stripped of the emotions that festered deep inside him. “And to be honest, I don’t give a shit about the assholes who want to see me dead. I’m not here to win friends and influence vampires.”

Laylah ignored the rigid stiffness of his shoulders and the don’t-screw-with-me vibe he was throwing off in pulses of frigid air.

She’d been pissing Tane off since the moment they met. Why stop now?

“Don’t do this.” She moved to stand directly before him. “Not to me.”

He refused to meet her gaze. “Do what?”

“Pretend that it doesn’t matter that you’re treated like a leper by those who have no right to judge you.” She reached up to touch the hard line of his jaw. “That you hide away from the world that doesn’t want you. That you’re so alone it makes your soul ache.”

He froze at her light touch, his expression wary.

“Laylah?”

“I don’t have any say in my fate, but you …” She slowly shook her head. “You could be a part of a clan. Even have a mate.”

“Mate?” His sharp laugh rasped across her nerves. “Can you see me in a cottage with a white picket fence?”

She lowered her hand, pretending she didn’t give a shit he was shutting her out.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” she snapped. “It’s not like it matters to me.”

She was taking her first step away when Tane reached out to lightly touch her shoulder.

“She was my maker.”

She turned back, meeting Tane’s bleak gaze. “What?”

“Sung Li.” His hand absently stroked over the bare skin of her shoulder, but she sensed his thoughts were far away. “She transformed me into a vampire.”

“So she’s your mother?” she asked, a queasy sensation rolling through her stomach.

She’d insisted that he reveal his pain.

As if she had the right to share his deepest secrets.

Now she realized that she was forcing him to stir up memories he’d fought to bury.

“Every relationship between a foundling and his maker is different. Sometimes it can be a parent and child connection, other times it can be sexual.” His voice was ruthlessly controlled. “Usually there’s nothing that holds them together. Until the past century most vampire foundlings were abandoned by their maker and rarely made it past their first year. Now Styx is trying to make certain any new vampire is brought directly into a clan.”

At any other time Laylah would have been fascinated by the glimpse into vampire politics.

For all their power, they were careful to keep their world shrouded in secrecy.

But there were far more important matters to occupy her mind.

“What about you and Sung Li?”

“She was my lover.”

“Your mate?” she rasped.

“No, but we were … close.”

Even braced for the revelation, Laylah jerked as if she’d been slapped. Sung Li.

She sounded … exotic. And no doubt beautiful, like all vampires. She wanted to slap the bitch without knowing another thing about her. “You said
were.”
“She’s dead.”

“How?”

“I cut off her head.”

Regret slammed into her. “Shit. I’m sorry. I should never have pushed.” She lifted her hand to touch him, only to pull it back at his tight expression. He was hanging on by a thread and she didn’t want to be the one to snap it. She’d done enough damage for one night, thank you very much. “It’s none of my business.”

A choking tension filled the room. “Don’t you want to know why?”

She shuddered. Not out of shock at his confession, but in horror at the anguish he must have suffered at being forced to kill his lover.

“I …” She licked her dry lips. “I don’t want to make you go back there.”

His hand slid to cup the back of her neck, his thumb stroking the line of her jugular. Almost as if it comforted him.

“Sung Li was ancient even before she made me,” he said, his voice a rough whisper. “And like many she had grown bored with her existence.”

Laylah frowned. “She changed you for entertainment?”

“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”

Yep. Super bitch.

“How long were you together?”

“Almost three hundred years.”

The stinging pain she felt was not jealousy. That would be … insane. Freaking nuts.

It was something else. Something not jealousy.

“Well no one can claim you aren’t in it for the long haul,” she muttered.

An emotion that might have been satisfaction ghosted over his beautiful face at the edge in her voice. Then, the bitter memories returned, shadowing his eyes.

“Time has little meaning for an immortal.”

“Maybe not, but you must have loved her very much to have stayed together so long.”

“Love?” He grimaced. “No. I was her disciple who worshipped at her feet. There was no true affection. If there had been I might have …”

That strange emotion gripping her heart eased, only to be replaced with a deeper, more worrisome desire to wrap herself tight against Tane and offer him … what? A comfort she didn’t understand and that he would no doubt reject?

She cleared her throat. “You might have what?” “I might have accepted the truth of her growing instability.”

It took a minute for his words to sink into her brain. “Oh.” She gave herself a mental head slap. She should have seen this coming a mile away. “She was …”

“An addict.”

She frowned at the regret that burned in the honey eyes. “That’s not your fault.”

“Not her addiction, but I was certainly her enabler.”

“She was a powerful vampire, Tane, not a second rate celebrity on Dr. Drew. I doubt any intervention in the world could have helped.”

With a muttered curse he paced across the room, his movements jerky.

“There’s only one intervention when a vampire goes rogue and it sure the hell doesn’t include any touchy-feely shit.” His voice was rough with ancient pain. “But I was weak. I cleaned up her ‘accidents’ and pretended I didn’t notice her erratic mood swings. I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, she was spiraling into bloodlust.”

Laylah bit her bottom lip. She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know this story didn’t have a happy ending.

“What happened?”

His head bent downward, his body held so rigidly it looked like it might shatter. “Exactly what you would expect.” “How many?”

She shivered, the terrifying image of a crazed vampire drenched in the blood of others making her stomach roll.

“She wiped out our entire clan and several human villages before I managed to corner her in the mountains of Peru.”

She hesitated before moving to stand directly behind him. She didn’t want to push, but it was obvious that his habit of keeping his memories buried hadn’t helped him heal. Maybe if he shared the horror he could lance the festering pain.

“Why didn’t she kill you with the rest of the clan?”

His sharp laugh bounced off the walls. “In her demented mind she wanted someone to admire her glorious path of destruction.”

Gods. Tane not only witnessed the woman he loved plunge into madness, but he had to watch her gory meltdown in full living color.

That would scar anyone.

“And it never occurred to her that you might put a stop to her rampage?”

“Why should she?” He slowly turned, revealing his stark expression. “I had been her loyal sycophant for countless years.”

She reached up and framed his face in her hands. His skin was cool and deliciously smooth. Perfect.

But his eyes were filled with a pain that made her heart bleed.

“And now you carry the guilt of those she killed?”

“Not killed.” He grasped her forearms, gripping her as if caught between the urge to shove her away or haul her against his chest. “They were slaughtered, Laylah. Ruthlessly, savagely slaughtered.”

She welcomed the pressure of his fingers that dug into her flesh. He’d been smothering his emotions for so long. It was a wonder he hadn’t exploded.

“You’re not to blame.”